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In this video, my son Reynold, "King of the Dark," and I (Boyd Edwards) brave the elements to show how to polar align our equatorially mounted Seestar (see • Seestar S50 Equatorial... and • Seestar S50 Equatorial... ), and how to orient the Seestar to the equatorial view of the sky so you can use the Seestar app to find and track objects automatically, the same as you would in altitude-azimuth mode.
The portion of the video that shows how to orient the Seestar to the equatorial view of the sky begins at 1:18.
The advantage of mounting the telescope equatorially is to eliminate field rotation and to improve tracking and frame acceptance rates. We've shot some amazing images in equatorial mode (see / 348716674607288 , and we've logged some excellent frame acceptance rates (up to 73%).
The current version of the Seestar firmware (as of Jan. 19, 2024) restricts you to observe only half of the sky. For northern observers, equatorial mode allows you to see only the stars in the northern celestial hemisphere, the same view of the sky that you get from the north pole. For southern observers, equatorial mode allows you to see only the stars in the southern celestial hemisphere. For now, northern observers who want to view an object in the southern celestial hemisphere, such the Orion Nebula (M42), will need to use altitude-azimuth mode or to polar align to the south celestial pole, a suggestion by Kai Yung, founder of the Smart Telescope Underworld, / 373417055173095 .
Northern observers who desire to polar align to the south celestial pole could reverse the direction of the red-dot finderscope on the Seestar base and point this finderscope at the north star, and then bingo, the Seestar would be pointing at the south celestial pole. One would have to figure out a way, though, to point the Seestar below the horizon, because the Sky Watcher wedge (that we use for our equatorial mount) will only allow you to point the Seestar above the horizon.
Just before publishing this video, we learned about apps (Polar Scope Align Pro for iPhone and Compass Steel 3D for Android) that can be used to polar align the Seestar, which would eliminate the need for a second red-dot finderscope (See the Smart Telescope Underworld post by Bro Mac; / 383692670812200 . We've not tested these apps, but we mention them here in case some of you might be interested.